SPUR Lunchtime Forum: Federal housing legislation and the built environment

"From the creation of the Federal Housing Administration in 1934 through the HOPE VI program of the last decade, federal housing legislation has had a tremendous impact on cities and regions. Doug Shoemaker of San Francisco’s Mayor’s Office of Housing, Dianne Spaulding of the Non-Profit Housing Association of Northern California, John Stewart of John Stewart Company, and Victor Rubin from PolicyLink explore the role the federal government has played in housing over the past century."

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As Smart Growth America showed us earlier today, the costs of sprawl are high. So it’s a bitter irony that federal rules have made it more expensive to build compact, mixed-use development by tightly limiting the share of commercial space in projects that receive financing from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Fortunately, those […]

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The real estate market is undergoing the most rapid period of change in a generation — and the shift is decidedly urban. A succession of recent studies have found there is an under-supply of urban-style housing — attached and small-lot, single-family homes — on the scale of about 13 million units. On the other hand, […]

For a long time, apartment buildings with ground-floor retail were the building blocks of America’s cities and towns. Combining housing and commercial uses is also essential for walkability and affordability, enabling people to travel shorter distances for their daily routines and get around without driving. But in most of the country today, it’s practically impossible to build or […]

From SPUR: San Francisco has built a substantial amount of market-rate housing and has many programs to support the development of affordable housing for low-income families. But what about those who earn too little to buy a market-rate home, but too much to qualify for an affordable housing unit? What should we be doing to […]